the balances we wear on our shoulders
by vapanalley
Summary: Whether it rains, pours, snows, or floods until the streets are covered with water like the world is ending she trusts her heart to tug her all the way through the glamoured church doors and into the large, room inlaid with stone.
1. Jace

A/N: If you have a problem with run-on sentences don't read on, then...

Disclaimer: Not profiting, not owning, fun having.

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Jace can be closed off at times. He loses himself in battles and comes back bloody but triumphant. His eyes are dark and unfathomable and he always has dirt under his fingernails. He is never the composed angel of a man she likes to think she knows so well. They're getting older and they're learning that nothing can always be faery lights and blue twilights. They're learning to compromise but there are still differences so vast it seems like the problems have become physical barriers.

It is days like those that Clary wishes she could be fighting with him. So she comes to the Institution after school everyday without fail. Whether it rains, pours, snows, or floods until the streets are covered with water like the world is ending she trusts her heart to tug her all the way through the glamoured church doors and into the large, room inlaid with stone. She trusts her heart to tell her she must learn how to fight to truly be part of Jace's world. She trusts her body to run all the way down three flights of stairs and learn years of _stuff_ she should have been taught much, much earlier.

"Faster. You're not moving fast enough! Run harder. You need to be like lightening. You need to be even _faster than that_ because demons don't _wait_ for you to move, do they?"

Maryse may not be holding a whip but her words just might be enough because with each syllable Clary is forcing down her urge to flinch. No weakness. Move faster. She pumps her arms and races to the other side of a seemingly endless plane of gray that resides under the Institution. The younger Shadowhunters have to be protected from the unholy, don't they? Clary reaches down and touches a throwing knife lying on the ground. She grasps the hilt and throws it as hard as she can at Maryse.

"You're closing your eyes as you throw. Do you think you're going to hit me like that? Swing with your whole body!" Maryse shouts. Her face is impassive and she doesn't move at all even as the knife whistles past her with inches to spare. Last month there had been a number of feet to spare. Clary almost feels proud before Maryse turns and plucks the knife out of the air and throws it back at Clary without seeming to waste a single movement. The motions she goes through are liquid and her pale, blue eyes are focused on Clary's green ones. She stares straight into Clary's face and Clary forces herself not to flinch again when the knife whistles past her head and shaves off a few inches of her hair. She can feel the strands settle onto her clothes.

"You're planning to be a Shadowhunter are you? You think you're just going to make a rune to become faster? To become _better_?"

The way Maryse says those words make her them sound like sins. Clary has thought about it. But she doesn't think she should make them. She's heard of how Jace, Alec, and Isabel got their marks through years of training and learning and hard trials that tested their abilities. She doesn't want to just make her own because even though she hasn't been raised like they have she realizes there's something innately _wrong_ about spiting all those generations of Shadowhunters.

"You wouldn't be able to use your enhanced abilities anyway. You can't replace pure skill." Maryse continues when Clary tunes back to her rant.

At least her mile times during P.E. are getting better. She's down to six minutes and that's just because she doesn't want to seem inhuman. Before she started this insane training program with Maryse she had been running eleven minute miles. What could she say? She was an artist, not a jock.

"Run twenty more and throw thirty knives at the west wall. Aim for the bull's eye and keep your eyes open, please. Come up when you're finished. And if you think about messing with the counting runes on the walls, all I can say is that it's your life you'll be forfeiting on the battlefield. That is, unless you happen to have a handy angel in your pocket the next battle too."

Clary knows that Maryse means well. Or at least, she thinks she does. Marye is trying to get her to finish and do well and the only way Maryse encourages her is with sharp barbs and the like. She treats her children the same way. Clary's seen the way she rules over them in the training room with an iron fist. But there's never been any animosity at the dinner table, so Clary just assumes that it's all good. Clary knows that her mother would have been just as happy to help her in all these exercises of "battle" but she didn't want her mother to feel bad for her or console her after these sessions. Her mother would try and go easy on her. At least with Maryse there was a guarantee she could get honest feed back and brutally efficient lessons.

It's not like she doesn't love her mom. She just trusts her a little less than she did before. She trusts her own judgement a little more. An even trade off of sorts.

Maryse glides out the room and up the stairs. Clary listens very hard to hear Maryse's soft pads up the steps. The first few days she couldn't even hear Maryse. She's improving.

She's still breathing a hard when she starts to run those twenty laps that Maryse demanded of her. Then she does some basic cool down stretches so her arms don't shake when she throws and she suddenly decides on a whim for every knife that misses the three inner rings she'll run two more laps. In the end she runs ten laps at the end of her knife throwing practice and walks up the stairs with legs like lead and arms like jello. She should have known Maryse would put weights in the hilts of those knives. At least she only missed the inner circles five times.

She stumbles onto the ground floor and heads the empty room where her backpack was stowed to change back into her regular clothes. She usually wore an old t-shirt and a pair of light shorts when she exercised. Just as she was walking down the walk way to the room, Jace walks down the stairs from the second floor and wraps his arms around her waist from behind. She's so tired she doesn't even hear him coming up behind her.

"Hey." He says with a grin. He leans down to kiss her but she pushes him away.

"I'm gross and it's getting late and I have _homework_." The last word is more of a groan than anything. Clary sounds tired even to her own ears and she offers Jace a smile like a consolation prize.

He just laughs and puts a hand on her shoulder to kiss her anyway. He still smells like lemons and soap and his fingers dig into the muscles in her shoulder and wiggle. She squeals but when he pulls his fingers away her shoulder feels better than it did before. It certainly hurt less.

"You don't have to do this." He breathes into her ear softly. But she see's his eyes after their first skirmish after their return from Alicante. His eyes had been wild and haunted and empty like there's something that was missing from the fight. He's integrated himself into her life. He does silly little things like give her flowers or goes places with her on the holidays. He lets her drag him to all the places she wants and regale him with mundane lore and lets himself be pulled into her small, small circle of friends she's made recently. He swallows his pride and lets her pull him into this _life _she's created that's something more than just being a Shadowhunter. She wants to be there with him in his world too. She wants to be able to remind him that there's nothing missing and that if everything goes to Hell they go together.

"Yeah, I think I do."


	2. Simon

Simon is forgetful. His way of dealing is forgetting and immersing himself in the universe of blind monks and demons who know kung fu. His eyes always glow when he watches or reads or talks about these alternate universes where he loses himself in. His hands move and he gestures. Clary knows at one point his temples must have hurt from staring at a computer screen for so long but she also knows that Simon hadn't minded. Sacrifice, he would have said.

She used to be able to be around him all the time. They didn't need anyone other than each other. Now there's more to the picture than just what was and it gets awkward and strange whenever they just _sit_. He's a mythical creature and she's the a race of angel descendants sent down to Earth to help hunt the things that go bump in the night. And it's never been stranger.

"Have you seen the latest chapters of Naruto? They're ridiculous." Simon says with a grimace. His lips purse and his eyes narrow as if he's going to claw out Sasuke's eyes himself.

"Nope. Haven't been following it."

"What? That's like…that's like…I don't even have enough vocabulary to express myself this dire situation. But this is indeed a terrible situation."

Clary just looks at him and forces a smile. She remembers teaching Max how to read Naruto from right to left.

"It doesn't have the same magnetism, you know?"

Simon snorts and runs his hand through his hair like he's frustrated with her. He might actually be, but she doesn't want to read him right now. He's so different now. He's dead. But he's still Simon. He's more confident. Now that there's no repercussions and he pretty much has all the time in the world he's decided that he's going to go to college later and lose himself in the digital world now.

"Oh, Clary, you've become so deprived hanging out in a church all day. Don't tell me what divine creed you plan to carry out next with your angel buddies."

She's so sick of having the little things remind her of how different everything is. At one time Simon would have been sweet and funny and kind when he said those words. But he means to cut now and he aimed in almost the right place.

"What's your problem when them? I thought you liked Isabelle and Alec and Jace."

"I do like Isabelle! And Alec is alright…"

Clary wants to claw at the carpet covering the floor of her room. Her room in Luke's house is bare since most of her stuff had been lost. There's just a bed, a desk, and her sketch book. There are also some school supplies but they can hardly be called something she owns can they? The springs of her bed squeal as Simon shifts from lying on his back to lying on his belly. He looks down at her inquisitively and tilts his head like a bird. She's sitting on the floor and leaning against a leg of her bed frame. She looks up at him by tilting her head back and his face comes into view upside down.

"What's your problem with Jace?"

"He's totally using you."

"No. He's totally not. Want to tell me how he's using me?"

Clary frowns at Simon and tries to glare but it might have just come across like she was trying to cross her eyes at him.

"You're relationship is totally uneven." Simon continues like he can't tell from just Clary's body language that she's on the defensive. "I mean, you're busting your butt to become a _proper _Shadowhunter but he's not really doing anything for you. All he has to do is sweep into your life and give you magical flowers or something. He's just being lazy and making your dreams of prince charming come true. He's golden boy and you're the faery princess he's come to rescue from a billion light years away. Maybe he'll present you a knife in a satin case and ask you to marry him."

Clary tilts her head so that she's looking at everything right side up again and turns her whole body so she's facing Simon face to face.

"It looks like that to you?"

"Hell yeah. Oh, that's a great band name. Looks Like Hell Yeah." Simon laughs but it's empty and then he starts to talk about band names and how he dreams about leaving and escaping and…

Clary listens and smiles when Simons expects her too. She wants to tell him that escaping from reality won't change what he's become and that Maia really _does_ want to help him and that Isabelle has gone a path of self-destruction and there are problems and he's not alone. But for now she'll listen to him talk about how one demon fell in love with a beautiful maiden but ended up eating her. She'll let him rant about Jace even though it's never like that.

The way she and Jace just _are. _It looks strange and weird and ungainly from the outside but on the inside there's something particular about their agreement. One world at a time and they will conquer it all. It's complicated and odd and not everyone is agreeing with what they have and what it's become. But Maryse is putting in the effort to try and train Clary and Jocelyn has learned that Jace is going to be part of Clary's world for maybe forever. So it might just work. Even in her head this silent argument she wages what Simon is pointless. He just wants to forget. And she'll always end up mending all these broken people in her life.

She'll smile and pretend like it's the way it used to be because Simon needs her to be here. She ignores this sick feeling in nothing will ever be the same and keeps trying to find Simon. It could be the effect of the Mark on his forehead or it could just be Simon. One day at a time and all the scales in the world can't measure what everything has become.


End file.
